


Louder Than Thunder

by ladyeternal



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Porn, BDSM, Deepthroating, Happy Ending, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Not by any member of Team IronStarBuck, Only in a dream tho, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slut Shaming, Spitroasting, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:46:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6763933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeternal/pseuds/ladyeternal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>True love doesn’t take away the darkness.  It merely gives you the strength to face it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Louder Than Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at tumblr!fic. Crossposted because I can’t help myself. Also, even though Tony accuses them of it, Bucky and Steve aren’t really telepathic; they just know each other’s moves so well by now that they can pick up on all sorts of each other’s non-verbal cues that no one else really notices.
> 
> Spoilers: To be safe, everything in MCU up to Civil War (which I’m studiously ignoring).
> 
> Disclaimer: If I owned MCU… well, I think we all know there’d be some **drastic** differences in canon at this point if shippers were running the show. I actually own little more than a tabby that gets destructive when he feels ignored and am only playing with this world for my own amusement and the free entertainment of others.
> 
> A million million thanks to [greymichaela](http://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyMichaela) for the beta and the encouragement!
> 
> Feedback is adored, so if you like the fic, please comment! And the more details the better; I love knowing what people like about my work.
> 
> Music: [Louder Than Thunder – The Devil Wears Prada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyrdRcyDmqo) \- IronStarBuck’s relationship theme  
> [No Light, No Light – Florence and the Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29XGlYUlqfA)  
> 

~ooooOOOoooo~

_“You’re such a disappointment.” The words cut like knives, like they always had, tearing away pieces of the self he’d stitched together so many times over the years. “You’ve never been anything but a spoiled, worthless self-absorbed nothing, coasting on your charm and never exercising even half of the brains you were born with._

_“Do you know how much work went into you? Do you care? And what have you done with the results of that work? Drunk yourself half to death, played your silly little games, spread your legs like a whore for anyone who flattered your ego. And now you’re doing it for the man who murdered me!”_

Thunder seemed to roll and in a heartbeat, Tony was fully awake, his desperation to get away from the dream carrying over until he was sitting up, his breath labored and his pulse racing. The two super-soldiers beside him were up in a flash, Steve scanning the room and Bucky rolling off the bed into a low crouch, blades in each hand. “Tony?”

The dream still had him, and Tony couldn’t answer. He could barely even move. He felt Steve focus on him, a broad, warm hand reaching up to splay across his back at the shoulder blades, and his right hand fumbled blindly to find Steve’s across the sheet pooled around those cut hips.

There were nights when the dreams didn’t come; weeks and weeks of them, as time went by. Whole months now where Tony could sleep peacefully between them, in the space they’d carved out for him in the midst of a love that spanned centuries, and only be disturbed by the nightmares that haunted his lovers’ REM cycles.

But when the dreams came, they were always the same: Howard, his eyes glinting in contempt, acid words in his dead father’s voice that had no less effect for their being no more than a manifestation of the scars his father had left on his psyche. No amount of therapy could banish Howard’s ghost entirely.

Especially not when Tony was sharing a bed with the man’s murderer.

Sometimes it was about Steve, about corrupting Howard’s most successful experiment, about infecting the best man Howard had ever known with Tony’s licentious ways. But most of the time, it was about Bucky: castigating him from beyond the grave for daring to forgive a man not in control of his own mind or actions for killing a man who had never seen Tony as more than an experiment in genetic engineering.

For Tony’s daring to love the light and dark stars in equal measure.

“Tony?” Steve’s voice again, soft and insistent in his ear. “Was it the dream again?”

He felt himself nod, his eyes closing against the echoes. He hated feeling like this. Hated the power he still gave Howard over him, though the man had been dead for a quarter century. Hated the sound of Bucky’s shifting beside the bed, then soft footfalls as he left the bedroom altogether. It shouldn’t feel this way, shouldn’t make him shy from Bucky’s touch in the aftermath.

It always did.

Slow, gentle, Steve shifted until he was behind Tony on the bed. It was nothing at all for those huge, somehow deft hands to take hold of Tony’s hips and lift Tony up, placing Tony astride his thighs and reclining with him, back to front, against their bank of pillows and padded headboard. Tony moaned a little as Steve’s legs parted his own, splaying his knees wide and leaving him open to however Steve wanted to touch him.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve murmured. Nimble fingers brushed across Tony’s right nipple, still sensitive from having been bitten to fullness earlier in the evening. Tony let out a short cry, a renewed erection stirring in response; Steve was already hard against his cleft and Tony ground back against it, needing the feel of Steve inside him to banish the taunting dreamscape.

“I’ve got you, Tony.” The gentle devotion in those words made Tony want to break. They were a far cry from the terse viciousness of their exchange on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, from the mistrustful camaraderie that had dangled between them for so long afterwards. Captain America had been everything Howard had ever said he was, but nothing had prepared Tony for the reality of the man behind the moniker: generous with himself and his love beyond the point of reason, passionate enough to reignite the sun, so tender with those he loved that it somehow shattered walls Tony had once thought impregnable.

“It was just a dream.” Steve’s right hand splayed across his chest, against the scar over his heart where the arc reactor used to live. The sensation still made Tony tremble, though with Steve it was no longer anxiety. With Steve, it was a promise, a reminder that he was safe here. That his heart was safe in those huge hands.

“I’m right here,” Steve promised. The fingers of his left hand were tracing the lines of Tony’s body: lingering over the welted skin of fresh lovebites, whispering against Tony’s sensitive inner thighs, skirting the erection now fully hard and leaking in favor of the tender purse of flesh at its base. Waterfalls of need rippled in the wake of those callused fingertips until Tony was thrashing against him, desperate not for the sake of chasing the last of the dream from his mind but out of pure longing to be full, to have Steve buried to the hilt and filling the empty places inside him.

“I’ve got you,” Steve repeated, and Tony all but wailed in response as Steve continued to torment him, his fingers light as the brush of hummingbird wings and equally as restive. The hand on his chest wouldn’t let him move, exerted just enough pressure to keep him where Steve wanted him. The strong thighs bracing his own apart prevented Tony’s feet from gaining enough purchase to find any real leverage, though Steve would’ve let Tony up in an instant if Tony asked it.

In all his extensive erotic adventures, Tony had never found a form of bondage quite so exquisite, nor one to which he would so willingly submit.

“Please, Steve.” Begging came far too easily to his tongue with Steve; with both of his lovers, really; but Tony couldn’t bring himself to care. He was shameless after all of the time and trial it had taken to get them here. After all of the hurt they’d dealt to one another and the world, there was nothing left to risk that hadn’t already been damaged and repaired half a dozen times over. “Please, Steve… I need…”

“I know.” Calm reassurance. Steve’s hands didn’t change position, left hand continuing its work driving Tony’s senses mad while the right pinioned Tony against him. “It’s okay, Tony… we always give you what you need, don’t we?”

There was barely a moment for Tony to register the pronoun difference, and then another set of hands was on him: one warm flesh, the other cool metal. The contrast drove a shout past his lips as the metal hand slid beneath Tony’s hips and lifted as easily as one might lift a doll, while the flesh hand grasped Steve’s erection and maneuvered until the broad head was pressed where Tony wanted it most.

“We’ve got you,” Bucky murmured, his whiskey-rough voice curling in Tony’s ear. Tony almost sobbed as Bucky’s hands guided his hips down: a slow, smooth glide thanks to their earlier lovemaking that had left Tony still stretched and somewhat slick; all the way down until his cheeks were flush against Steve’s hips.

The soft burn of not re-prepping him spread through Tony’s veins like lava, leaving a warm haze in its wake. He opened his eyes, needing in that moment to see Bucky’s face, and was greeted by eyes intent with lust and yet still unsure, sharp incisors dug into his bottom lip as Bucky met his gaze.

This was the first time Bucky had ever tried to join them after one of his Howard dreams. Always before, he’d let Tony and Steve be and found his way to the gym, or the all-night coffee bar, not returning until long after their private lovemaking was over. Tony had never asked it of him; neither had Steve. It was as if Bucky had always sensed that the dreams made his presence… unwanted.

Tony reached up, the fingers of his own right hand following the curve of Bucky’s jaw. He heard Steve’s shaky exhale and felt the pulse of Steve’s increased arousal at the sight all the way to his core, sparking through his blood and driving even more of the dream-induced darkness away.

This man beneath his fingertips was not the thing that had murdered his parents. He’d accepted that in his head a long time ago; the unlikely bond that had been braided between the three of them would not have been possible if he hadn’t. It was well past time that he acted like it.

H.Y.D.R.A. had no power over them. Nor did the ghost of Howard Stark. Not unless they gave it to the bastards.

“Kiss me.” The whispered request was barely past his lips before Bucky granted it, surging across the space between them and capturing Tony’s face in both hands as their mouths caught each other. The impetus pressed Tony even harder against Steve’s solid frame and Steve shifted their angle to accommodate it, until Bucky’s hips slotted against Tony’s and the friction between them ignited.

Steve could barely move beneath them; he didn’t need to do much in the state Tony was in. Lifting his knees just enough to get his feet braced, Steve found the leverage he needed and rolled his hips up against Tony’s. A shuddering gasp exploded in the space between Tony and Bucky’s mouths, muffled to all but super-enhanced hearing, and Tony’s hands scrabbled for purchase across the dense muscle of Bucky’s back, his body caught between the need to grind back against the deep flex of Steve inside him and the need to press up and chase the friction where his own achingly hard flesh rode against the sweat-slick cut of Bucky’s hip.

It soon didn’t matter: coordinating without needing to speak had been part of Steve and Bucky’s bond decades before Tony had even been born. Bucky’s hips shoved down as Steve’s hips flexed back, then shifted back as Steve pressed up into Tony again, until their bodies rocked in tandem with Tony trapped between them, a willing prisoner to the onslaught of sensation they unleashed. Bucky traded kisses between Tony and Steve, catching Steve’s lips in quick passes when Steve surged up before sealing across Tony’s mouth to swallow the sounds that Tony couldn’t help making as he was driven utterly mindless, abandoning everything but the mounting crescendo roaring in his veins…

Orgasm slammed through Tony like the breaking of a wave, his vision washing out white as he spasmed between the men he loved.

Slowly, he came back to himself, still sandwiched between them though they were now utterly still. Steve was still hard inside him; Bucky’s unslaked need dug into his hip. Tony’s limbs were heavy from the endorphin rush, his mind finally quiet again.

In a more playful moment, Tony might have suggested that they occupy each other: watching their lovemaking while he recovered and offering increasingly-outrageous erotic suggestions. But right here, right now, Tony wanted more than that. He needed to take back the power he’d given the nightmares that wore Howard’s face for all this time.

“Steve?”

Steve’s breath was labored with restraint, as if it was everything he could do to remain still. “Yeah, Tony?”

Tony never took his eyes from Bucky’s face. “I wanna blow Barnes here until his eyes are permanently crossed while you bang me like a screen door in a hurricane. Think we can arrange that?”

The surprise on Bucky’s face drew a shaky laugh from Steve. “Yeah, I think we can.”

Tony grinned as Bucky scrambled off him, pulling back far enough to make room for Tony to get on all fours. The loss of Steve’s heat inside him caused a pang in Tony’s chest as Steve lifted him off, but by the time Tony’s knees were braced well apart on the bed and his mouth was on a level with Bucky’s hips, Steve was right behind him, hands wrapping around Tony’s hips to steady him. “Tony, are you sure about this?”

The concern in Steve’s tone pricked tears in Tony’s eyes even as a laugh threatened to bubble up in his chest. How Steve had so easily picked up on Tony’s almost reckless disregard for his own body’s limits in the bedroom, he would never know, but Steve was a stickler for affirmative consent when he felt like Tony was pushing himself too hard. “Steve, please… I need this.”

Bucky’s flesh hand threaded into Tony’s hair, the metal hand curled around his own erection to keep it angled towards Tony’s lips. “You ain’t always good at knowing when to say when, kid.”

“Which of us are?” Tony sassed. Before either could answer, his tongue darted out and drew along the weeping slit of the tumescent flesh in front of him. “C’mon, you two,” he pushed over the sound of Bucky’s deep groan. “I’m aging here.”

Convinced, or at least unable to restrain himself any longer, Steve seated himself back inside Tony in one long drive. At the first breach, Tony moaned, long and loud, leaving his mouth open to receive Bucky as Steve drew back.

Just as before, it didn’t take long for Bucky and Steve to find a coordinated rhythm. Tony gave himself up to it, letting his throat relax to take Bucky to the root, and sank into the languid hazy pleasure of being thoroughly owned by the men bracketing his body.

Time lost meaning; the flex-push-pull of both men’s need was all he knew, all he wanted to know, measured against the metronome of his own heartbeat. Suspended between them, Steve’s thumbs rubbing over his hipbones and Bucky’s fingers massaging into his scalp, Tony could forget everything but the way they cherished him. The way they needed him.

The way they loved him.

It was always a toss-up as to which one of them would give out first; this time, it was Bucky, his fingers tightening just enough to make sparks flash behind Tony’s eyes as his release pumped down Tony’s throat and moans stuttered in his own. Steve wasn’t far behind him, the sight of Tony milking Bucky’s orgasm out of him enough to finally tip him over the edge. Tony’s eyes teared again as he felt Steve’s rhythm falter, his name a hoarse shout on Steve’s lips as warmth washed into his core.

Bucky disengaged first, letting Tony flex his jaw while drawing Tony up off his elbows and into his arms. Steve withdrew gently, heart cracking in his chest as he watched both of the men he could no longer live without finally crossing the last battlefield between them.

“I’m sorry,” Tony murmured, his head tipped almost limply against Bucky’s metal shoulder. “I know it… they took every piece of you from you they could. It’s not fair to keep acting like-”

“Shut up,” Bucky cut in, no heat behind the words. “You and Stevie are too damned much alike sometimes. If you were Catholic, I’d tell you to give up guilt for Lent like I do with him; it’d do you both some good.” When Tony huffed a laugh, a matching chuckle rolling in Steve’s throat behind them, Bucky nuzzled into the place where Tony’s neck met his shoulder and held him tighter. “It’s okay, kid. I’m still working on forgiving myself for it. I get it. We’re okay.”

Steve reached for them then, covering Bucky’s flesh hand where it rested across the small of Tony’s back. “C’mon, you two… we need to get cleaned up and change the sheets if we’re going to get any sleep tonight.”

For a moment, Tony was reluctant to move at all; the quiet aftermath always lasted longer when they could just linger, sated and warm and safe. But Steve was right, and the languor in his limbs beckoned him back towards sleep, woven with the promise of dreamless rest. “Okay… don’t know if I can walk just yet, but okay.”

Bucky laughed as Steve slid off the bed. Without any discussion, Bucky shifted his grip on Tony’s body and Steve scooped him into his arms, a squawk of surprise leaving Tony’s lips as he was carried bridal-style into the adjoining bath. From over Steve’s shoulder, he could see Bucky stripping the soiled linens from the bed. “Someday,” Tony groused, “you two are going to quit using your freaky telepathic we’ve-known-each-other-for-a-hundred-years thing to gang up on me.”

Steve’s smile was indulgent as he set Tony down to start the steam shower. “Not likely, man. You’re too hard to surprise without it.”


End file.
